I’m not going to tell you to meditate or get up at 4am.
These are tools I actually use to give myself more free time each day—while running a multi-million dollar company.
#1. Superhuman for emails
Emails are the bane of my life. Maybe of yours too.
I have 3 inboxes and used to receive 50 to 100 emails per day across all.
Then, when you respond, so do they, so you’re in a perpetual cycle of distraction.
Until I discovered SUPERHUMAN.
Why do I love it?
It turns the ‘answering emails’ process into a game
It works across my phone and desktop
Pulls in my GMAIL & Microsoft Outlook accounts into one place.
The shortcuts make it so fast to respond, unsub & mark done.
You can create snippets to quickly book meetings
I’ve created ‘split inbox’ rules for receipts/dispatch notifications - to unclog my inbox.
You can easily block cold outreach senders who want to “10x your business by just jumping on a quick call”… God, I hate those emails.
Try out Superhuman here:
https://superhuman.com/refer/ujc3fcri
Oh and the AI feature helps me ‘soften’ my responses. I write “this is not for me” and AI turns it into a long, kind response. Saving me countless hours.
#2. ToDoIst
I’m not very organised as a person. I don’t have coloured tabs, highlighters or a calendar that plans out my every waking moment.
I think there is a lot of bullsh*t in colour-coded Trello boards, or collaborative team projects on Monday. I’ve tried them all.
You spend more time ‘organizing’ than ‘doing’ with those tools.
So in the last 10 years of trying to be more productive, this is the tool that suits me the most - and it’s free.
I have it as a big widget on my iPhone’s first page of apps - and I just dump all of my thoughts into that list as tasks. Everything. Not just work.
Walk the dog
Add a new homepage feature
Check sales against last year
Email Rory back about ‘x’
Book a haircut on Tuesday
Then when I’ve finished a task, I just check the box and it disappears.
Nothing beats a basic to-do list.
#3. Wired Headphones
When people find out I don’t use AirPods they always say “But you can afford them.”
True. I own AirPods too, but AirPods are inferior in every way to wired headphones.
By going back to wired headphones:
I don’t have to worry about low battery or charging.
I don’t have to worry about it connecting to my Mac in the middle of a phone call.
I don’t have to worry about my car/AirPods getting into a Bluetooth-switching battle.
With a pair of wired headphones, you can take a 3-hour phone call and not worry about where you are, or if you have enough battery left.
Apart from sometimes catching the wire on door handles, I promise going back to wired will help you get more done.